It was one dark night that brought Damon Wolfe and Sophie Parker together. They were two tortured souls, looking for escape, and they weren't supposed to see each other ever again…

Four years later, Sophie's FBI father, who is also Damon's mentor, is killed in a suspicious car crash after leaving Sophie a cryptic message to trust no one from the agency. When Damon shows up looking for her, she isn't sure if he's friend or enemy, but she knows he could easily rip apart what is left of her heart.

The last thing Damon wants is to get involved with Sophie again. It was hard enough to walk away the first time. But she's in trouble, her father's reputation is under attack, and the lives of his fellow agents are at stake if there's a traitor in their midst.

When someone starts shooting at them, they have no choice but to go on the run and off the grid. Everyone in their world becomes a suspect. They want to uncover the truth, but will it turn out to be the last thing they expect? Proving her father's innocence might just cost them their hearts…and their lives…

I get excited each time I see a new RS series and ‘Perilous Trust’ for a moment there, did get me going with a great opening, a death amidst suspicious circumstances and several parties implicated when that actually happens. Throw in an awkward ‘second-chance’ so to speak and ‘Perilous Trust’ does seem like a good mix to get into when the daughter of a dead FBI agent has her life upended and another upcoming agent who pops back into it just as things start to get messy.

But I thought that was also where storytelling faltered as well. Apart from some dialogues where characters’ speech patterns don’t seem to mirror how people actually talk, Sophie and Damon find themselves cleaning up a mess that’s caused by a peripheral (and dead) character that actually drew in quite a large cast of secondary characters and villains.

There’s also some back history of their friends and their hookup 4 years ago that felt randomly inserted into the mix, which as a result, made me feel more and more like a shipwreck survivor bobbing alone at sea than an invested party in the story clutching at anything and everything to see how it plays out. In other words, the action had ‘spiralled’ outwards so far from where we first started that it was not just difficult to get the connections down, but that I found myself becoming indifferent to them.

That for me, did take the shine off Sophie/Damon’s developing relationship and consequently, I couldn’t exactly buy into them as a couple, let alone believe that what they felt for each other could really go beyond the constructed closeness that sudden danger can bring.

This isn’t to say they aren’t likeable characters on their own though, because they are—for most part. There aren’t TSTL moments, nor random outbursts of hysterics or out-of-character childish behaviour that can tank a story for me, but I didn’t find myself on the edge of my seat or entirely anxious for Sophie/Damon to get their HEA. Perhaps it would have been easier to relate to their relationship had Barbara Freethy spent more time exploring the consequences of what they did 4 years ago but the balance of romance and suspense as always, is a difficult one to master—and please every reader as well.

‘Perilous Trust’ isn’t a bad start though and as said earlier, every new take in RS is something that gets me moist with excitement. I just wished I’d stayed moist the whole time.